Case Study: Rare Minority Population

The Problem

Healthy donors are generally easier to recruit than patients with specific health conditions, especially when inclusion and exclusion criteria are applied; however, sourcing biospecimen from narrowly-defined healthy minority groups can be just as challenging. A top-5 contract research organization was unable to obtain a healthy Japanese control population for a study being conducted for their client.

The CRO's client was already providing the patient (disease) material; however they were unable to source healthy controls. The CRO's client needed 15 healthy donors of 100% Japanese descent, half male, half female, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation American. Furthermore, the collected specimens needed to be processed within 4 hours of collection, limiting the study to Japanese Americans residing in Los Angeles.

The Solution

Sanguine executed a recruiting strategy that was centered on an effective online advertising campaign targeting the Asian community. In just 1 week Sanguine was able to identify over 70 willing participants, easily fulfilling the 15 subject cohort (50:50, male:female). Mobilizing Sanguine's phlebotomy network in LA, draws were collected and delivered to Sanguine's lab for processing within 4 hours of collection.

All 15 subjects were collected in the following 2 weeks. The entire collection, from contract initiation to processing the final specimen and delivery to the CRO took less than 3 weeks, thereby allowing the client to proceed with their experiments in a timely manner.